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Wordsworth and Godwin in “Frozen Regions”
- ELH
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 83, Number 4, Winter 2016
- pp. 1043-1073
- 10.1353/elh.2016.0039
- Article
- Additional Information
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Following G. W. F. Hegel, critics tend to dismiss William Wordsworth’s meditations on Stoicism in The Excursion as a harbinger of his growing apathy and political conservatism. For Wordsworth, however, the radical tenor of Stoicism in the 1790s made it more than a sign of acquiescence or indifference. By tracing key connections between The Excursion and Wordsworth’s early fascination with William Godwin’s attempt to “abstract the hopes of man / Out of his feelings,” this essay contends that the Stoic outlook Wordsworth found in Political Justice outlasted his various political commitments to shape his mature ethical sensibility.